Somalia

REFUGEES

Figure 5. Refugee Camps in Somalia, 1990

The 1977-78 Ogaden War caused a massive influx of Somalis who
had been living in eastern Ethiopia (and to a lesser extent from
other areas) into Somalia. Most refugees were ethnic Somalis, but
there were also many Oromo, an ethnic group that resided
primarily in Ethiopia. The Somali government appealed for help to
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in
September 1979, but UNHCR did not initiate requests for
international aid until March 1980.

In its first public appeal to the UN, the Somali government
estimated 310,000 in the camps in September 1979. By mid-1980
estimates had risen to 750,000 persons in camps and at least half
that number outside them. In early 1981, Mogadishu estimated that
there were more than 1.3 million refugees in the camps and an
additional 700,000 to 800,000 refugees at large, either
attempting to carry on their nomadic way of life or quartered in
towns and cities.

In 1980 representatives of international agencies and other
aid donors expressed skepticism at the numbers Somalia claimed,
and in 1981 these agencies asked UN demographers to conduct a
survey. The survey estimated 450,000 to 620,000 refugees in the
camps; no estimate was made of the number of refugees outside the
camps. The Somali government rejected the survey's results;
international agencies subsequently based their budgeting on a
figure of 650,000.

Conflicting figures concerning the composition of the refugee
population by age and sex led a team of epidemiologists from the
Centers for Disease Control of the United States Public Health
Service to determine the demographic characteristics of a sample
of refugee camps in mid-1980. They found the very young (under
five years of age) to range from 15 to 18 percent of the camp
population; those from five to fifteen years of age ranged from
45 to 47 percent; from 29 to 33 percent were between fifteen
years of age and forty-four; 6 to 8 percent were forty-five years
or older. The epidemiologists did not find the male-female ratio
unusually distorted.

In 1990 there were refugee camps in four of Somalia's sixteen
regions, or administrative districts
(see
fig. 5). The number of
persons in these camps ranged from under 3,000 to more than
70,000, but most held 35,000 to 45,000 refugees. According to a
government document, the camps in Gedo held a total of more than
450,000 persons, in Hiiraan more than 375,000, in Woqooyi Galbeed
well over 400,000, and in Shabeellaha Hoose nearly 70,000.

The burden of the refugee influx on Somalia was heavy.
Somalia was one of the world's poorest countries, an importer of
food in ordinary circumstances and lacking crucial elements of
physical and social infrastructure such as transportation and
health facilities. The general poverty of the indigenous
population and the ad hoc character of the National Refugee
Commission established under the Ministry of Local Government and
Rural Development and other government agencies dealing with the
refugee problem contributed to the misuse and even the outright
theft of food and medical supplies intended for refugees.

In a country with limited arable land and fuels and visited
fairly often by drought or flash floods, refugees were hard put
to contribute to their own support. Some refugee camps were so
located that transportation of food and medical supplies was
fairly easy, but that was not true for many other camps. Some
were in or near areas where, in a year of good rain, crops could
be grown, but others were not. In almost all cases, easily
accessible firewood had been rapidly depleted by early 1981, and
the refugees had to go long distances for what little could be
found.

Despite the responses of a number of countries--including the
United States--to the nutritional and medical requirements of the
refugees, their situation in mid-1981 remained difficult.
Epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control reported in
early 1980 that the "major problem affecting the refugee children
was protein energy malnutrition." Child mortality was high,
particularly among newly arrived refugees. A 1980 epidemic of
measles was responsible for many deaths in camps in Gedo and
Woqooyi Galbeed. Another leading cause of children's deaths was
diarrhea, a consequence in part of the severe lack of adequate
sanitation, particularly with respect to water sources.

To sustain the refugee population even at a low level
required regular contributions from other countries, an adequate
and competently managed distribution system and, if possible,
some contribution by the refugees themselves to their own
subsistence. In April 1981, Somalia's Ministry of National
Planning and Jubba Valley Development issued its Short- and
Long-Term Programme for Refugees detailing projected needs
and proposals, all of which required international support in
various forms--money, food, medical supplies, and foreign staff,
among others. When the program was published, overall
responsibility for refugees lay with the Ministry of Local
Government and Rural Development and its National Refugee
Commission. Other ministries, including those of health and
education, had responsibility for specific projects. By 1990 many
ministries had special divisions or sections devoted to refugee
matters. However, as noted earlier, by mid-1991 government
ministries had ceased functioning.

Age and sex composition, camp conditions, and refugee needs
remained roughly constant until 1988, when the civil war,
particularly in the north, produced a new and massive wave of
refugees. This time the refugees went from Somalia to Ethiopia,
where a large number of displaced northerners, mainly members of
the Isaaq clan-family fleeing the violence and persecution from
the Somali Army's "pacification" campaigns, sought sanctuary in
Ethiopia's eastern province, Harerge Kifle Hager. The new wave of
asylum- seekers almost doubled the number of displaced persons in
the region. According to the UNHCR, Ethiopia and Somalia between
them hosted in 1989 a refugee population of about 1.3 million.
Nearly 960,000 of the total were ethnic Somalis. Somalia hosted
600,000 refugees, of whom nearly 80 percent were ethnic Somalis
from Harerge, Ogaden, Bale, and Borena regions. The remaining 20
percent were Oromo, the largest ethnic group in the Horn of
Africa, from Harerge, Bale, and Borena regions.

In southern Somalia, refugees lived in camps in the Gedo and
Shabeellaha Hoose regions. In the northwest, camps were
distributed in the corridor between Hargeysa and Boorama,
northwest of Hargeysa. Because of the nomadic tendency of the
Somali and Oromo refugees, major population shifts occurred
frequently.

According to UNHCR statistical data for 1990, the camps in
southern and central Somalia housed about 460,000 displaced
persons. No reliable statistical data existed on the gender and
age composition of the refugee population in Somalia. Informed
conjecture put the sex ratio at 60 percent female and 40 percent
male--the differential resulting from the migration of some of
the men to the oil-rich Middle East countries, where they sought
employment.

A significant number of Somali refugees emigrated to European
countries, in particular Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden,
Finland (where Somalis constituted the largest number of
refugees), and Canada. Britain had a particularly generous asylum
policy toward Isaaq refugees.

In providing assistance and relief programs, the UNHCR had
collaborated in the past with an assortment of nongovernmental
organizations and voluntary agencies. Their assistance fell into
two general categories: care and maintenance programs, and what
was described as a "durable solution." The former were assistance
programs alleviating immediate needs for food, water, sanitation,
health, shelter, community services, legal assistance, and
related requirements. Durable solutions were voluntary
repatriation based on prior clearance given by the Ethiopian
government, local integration in Somalia with limited assistance,
and facilitation of integration of refugees who demonstrated a
well-founded fear for their safety should they repatriate. For
most refugee assistance programs, local difficulties caused
problems that led to charges of mismanagement, insensitivity, and
corruption.

In 1990 there were approximately 360,000 Somali refugees in
eastern Ethiopia, almost all of whom belonged to the Isaaq clan
from northern Somalia. These refugees had sought asylum as a
result of the May 1988 attack in which Somali National Movement
guerrillas seized the city of Burao for three days and almost
occupied Hargeysa. In the counteroffensive, government troops
indiscriminately shelled cities, causing practically the entire
Isaaq urban population to flee in panic into Ethiopia. Six
refugee camps contained the displaced Isaaq: 140,000 in the Aware
camps of Camabokar, Rabasso, and Daror; 10,000 in Aysha; and
210,000 in two camps at Hartishek.

According to the UNHCR, in the camps for Somali refugees the
refugees generally lived in family units. Although the 1988
influx contained mainly urban dwellers from Hargeysa and Burao,
by the end of 1989 the camp population included many pastoralists
and nomads. Their tendency to remain in one location for only
short periods presented major problems for public health
monitoring.

With the flight of Siad Barre and consequent fall of his
government in late January 1991, significant population shifts
occurred. According to sketchy UNHCR reports, there were more
than 50,000 Somali refugees in various camps in Mombasa, Kenya.
These were mainly Daarood who had fled as a result of Hawiye
clan-family assaults on them when the state disintegrated and the
Daarood residents of Mogadishu became the objects of revenge
killings. Another 150,000 were scattered in the North Eastern
Province of Kenya, especially in and around the border town of
Liboi and slightly farther inland. Other thousands had fled to
eastern Ethiopia, where the UNHCR stated it was feeding more than
400,000 ethnic Somalis. Many others were dispersed throughout the
border areas.